So Long at the Fair: A Story in Drabbles
by nebroadwe
Summary: Anime or mangaverse. At first, Ed and Al suspect that Winry is merely having fun without them. Written for the 2009 Ed/Winry Fire and Ice Challenge. No spoilers.


The first train to Riesenbuhl leaves East City in the dark before dawn. Half-asleep, Edward Elric limps into a second-class carriage and sprawls across three seats; Alphonse, with an apologetic glance at their fellow passengers, disposes his armored frame on the facing two. A few newspapers rustle, but it's too early for curiosity or disapproval -- or Colonel Mustang's insinuations _("Do enjoy your ... medical leave, Fullmetal.") Worth every cen, these tickets,_ Ed concludes, propping his bollixed left ankle on an armrest and covering his face with his sleeve.

The engine shrieks, eager to race the sun to the horizon.

**oOo**

Winry yawns discreetly over her oatmeal as Nellie's family bustles around her. Yesterday morning she helped wash a heifer and wrap the bemused animal in old sheets for the drive to the fairgrounds. Crowded against the show ring's rail, she squeezed Nellie's hand while the judge peered at Blossom's udders, then squealed and hugged her friend when the blue ribbon was pinned to Blossom's halter. The remains of the afternoon were spent caressing their champion, accepting congratulations, and planning a tour of the midway.

Smiling, Winry hands her bowl to Nellie's mother. Yesterday was for glory; today is for fun.

**oOo**

As the sky brightens from lavender to pale blue, Ed and Al's train chugs past fields mowed to stubble and orchards heavy with fruit. The sweet corn is in; soon the apple trees will be picked clean and their windfalls pressed for cider. On windy hillsides rams are pastured among the ewes.

But at Riesenbuhl the brothers disembark into the warmth of an old wives' summer. Ed shucks his coat and ties it around his waist. "Any chance Granny hasn't made corn chowder?" he asks, hankering instead for grilled pork and cucumber salad.

"Don't count on it," replies Al wistfully.

**oOo**

Accustomed to the stridor of her grandmother's workshop, Winry revels in the fair's convivial cacophony: a wheezing calliope competing with the brass band on stage behind the exhibitors' tent; barkers urging passers-by to take a chance on the wheel of fortune or try their luck at ring-toss; friends hallooing friends from the big wheel and the chair-o-planes; children atwitter among the stalls for popcorn and fairy floss while their parents gossip over funnel cakes and lemonade.

"What d'you want to do first?" Nellie asks, yesterday's plans forgotten. "Games? Rides? Food?"

"Everything!" Winry answers, spreading her arms wide and laughing. _"Everything!"_

**oOo**

When nobody greets them or responds to Al's knocks and Ed's shouts, the brothers let themselves into the Rockbell house. Al clomps ahead to check kitchen and workshop, but Ed, pausing in the hall to cock an ear up the stairs, can hear the place is empty. It echoes back their voices and footsteps just as theirs did, the months they lived in it alone.

"I told you we should've called," says Al, smugly reproachful.

"Yeah, yeah." Joints squeaking, Ed turns his back on the vacant hush in favor of a lingering catbird's cheerful mockery. "Let's wait on the porch."

**oOo**

Winry always chooses a seat in the merry-go-round's innermost ring, though she's outgrown the thrill of sneaking glimpses of the motor and the ambition to operate the ride herself. _Building_ one, now -- a small carousel, suitable for backyard use -- that plan she still tinkers with, sketching improvements to drive gears, clutch ... even mounts. Once, when Ed borrowed her school notes, he added bat wings to the prancers she doodled in the margins and covered them in spiked tack. _Now they're not all boring!_ he insisted.

_Boys are so immature,_ Winry thinks, patting her unicorn as she alights.

**oOo**

By mid-afternoon Ed's conversation has deteriorated into a peevish litany of _where'd they go?_ and _what's taking so long?_ Al suggests raiding the cupboards, trusting a sandwich to stifle his brother's complaints while he himself ruminates on the mystery. "Maybe it's district fair weekend," he says eventually, inspired by the jam jars glinting on their shelf.

"I didn't see any p_UH_-osters," Ed objects through a pickle-scented belch.

"We were in a hurry." (Al refrains from opining that mobs have rousted them less swiftly.)

Ed shrugs. "Whatever," he replies, less fretful on a full stomach. "They'll be home for supper, then."

**oOo**

As arranged, Winry meets her grandmother for the tractor pull. "Enjoying yourself?" Pinako asks, noting the pink stain ringing her granddaughter's mouth. "Wipe your face; you'll draw flies."

Winry spits into her handkerchief and scrubs obediently. "Granny," she says, voice muffled, "Nellie's mother says she can stay for the dance after supper, so can I? Can we?" she corrects herself, because Nellie couldn't promise her a ride home. "Please?" She crumples the damp, sticky cloth between her clasped hands.

Childish entreaties for grown-up treats have never moved Pinako, so they're both surprised when she answers, "Yes ... yes, why not?"

**oOo**

Al credits his brother's rare willing silence to admiration of the sunset embers flickering among the trees. Actually, Ed quit grumbling about Winry's absence to cork Al's reminiscences of past fairs -- torture while trapped here. Who wouldn't rather be riding the big wheel, whistling at spooning couples or tossing peanut shells down on bald heads or rocking the car until Winry screams and the operator yells, _"Hey! You kids!"_?

But they can't squeeze three in a seat anymore and neither brother would go up alone with a _girl._ They might die of embarrassment -- or reawaken their dormant contest.

**oOo**

These days Pinako chooses not to drink her cronies under the table -- belated acknowledgment of their wives' sensibilities and their own cirrhosing livers. Not all of them appreciate the concession. "We're gettin' older, Miz Rockbell," Colt Cutter remarks, disingenuously toasting her with his third pint while she's still nursing her first.

She's withered tougher sots than he with a look, but right now she's watching the lines form for a reel, the men's side sparser than the women's except for the roiling knot, all elbows, across from her granddaughter's fair and merry head. "Not just us," she replies dryly.

**oOo**

Al can't pace without scarring the floorboards and Ed nixed any further calls after the Wrights' phone rang unanswered, so there's nothing to do but wait for Granny and Winry to come home -- as they surely must, because the dog wants feeding, patients have appointments booked, and nobody's skidded into the river since the district widened the bridge.

The hall clock chimes the quarter-hour. Sighing, Den lays her head on Al's knee and he gently rubs her ears. Ed props himself against a windowsill, growling at the broken ankle that prevents him from pacing (or searching the riverbanks), too.

**oOo**

Winry's exhilarated recapitulation of the dance _("... I stepped on Jed Wright's feet _twice,_ but they're _huge_ ...")_ quiets into dreamy calm as the car rattles away from the lights of fair and town. Pinako responds with indulgent _hmms_ and _uh-huhs_, fixing her own impressions of the evening in memory. Her children have always grown faster than photographs could record: witness her adopted grandsons, who burst, unexpected but unmistakable, from the house as she turns into the drive.

"'Oh, dear,'" she quotes under her breath, observing Ed's uneven gait as he storms toward the car. "'What can the matter be?'"

**oOo**

Winry isn't asleep, exactly, so she isn't dreaming, exactly -- merely remembering the fair with advantages. So she's bewildered to hear Ed demanding to know where she's been, as if he hadn't ridden with her and Al on the chair-o-planes or partnered her in the reel ... except that was elephant-footed Jed Wright, wasn't it? _Oh. _

Well, at least they can share a midnight snack to crown the day. She fumbles for the preserves Nellie's sister gave her and opens her eyes to smile into Ed's red face. "Here," she says, handing him the jar. "Shut up and try these."

**oOo**

Ed's complaints only extract Winry's promise (or threat) to have his ankle in the workshop at dawn. Over bread and jam she recants to the extent of removing his automail before the brothers retire upstairs. "Call ahead next time, idiot," she says, dumping a stack of magazines on the bedside table for Al.

"Sure, sure," he answers -- then ducks the journal that skims his scalp.

He won't call. She knows it, just as he knows she wasn't aiming for his head. He'll sleep soundly, all anxieties allayed, and she'll have the damaged joint rebuilt when he wakes.

Fair's fair.


End file.
